Gender Note

I’m always changing to fit what others expect, but I don’t really know what I expect. 

I think I’m one thing, but around him, I’m another. 

“Do I contradict myself?”

Maybe she’ll like me more if I’m less masculine, less manly. 

Maybe he’ll understand me more if I act more like me- like him. 

“Very well then, I contradict myself.”

I never stop to consider what I really am. 

Everywhere I go I have to squeeze into a box. Tape it up with a handwritten label, the cardboard bulging on the sides, tearing at the seams. 

I want to be comfortable enough in my own skin to do traditionally feminine things.

I want to wear that skirt. I want to be with her, hangout with them, not be a man.  

But if I wear the skirt and the colorful eyeshadow, what if they don’t see how I want them to see me. 

He looks good in that skirt  I want them to say

I’m scared I’d have to abandon the side of me that I’ve worked so hard to prove is there. 

I wish I could

I want to 

to say to myself

to truly believe

“I exist as I am, that is enough.”

I don’t want to prove every part of myself. 

I don’t want to have to walk around with a giant label on my forehead just to feel alive. 

I wish there weren’t strings yanking me in different directions, all fighting over the same thing. 

I wish I could accept who I am, without being forced into a box that feels unsafe. 

I wish there was a category for people like me. 

I wish there was a word for what my gender is. 

A word that everyone can understand, a word that when I say it, everyone finally gets me. 

I just want to be. 

**Quotes from ‘Song of Myself’ by Walt Whitman